Searching for Lizzie
by Sapphire1112
Summary: Based on 'Protection' Feelings run high when there's a child missing but friends help each other. I do not own the Characters or the episode 'Protection'.
1. Chapter 1

"Stab wound?" Jack ventured, receiving a nod from Nikki in response. She switched on her tape recorder.

"Sharp force injury. No weapon present."

"Stabbed in the back, eh?" Jack interjected.

"Small irregular tear. Bruising visible where the handle of the weapon hit the skin." Nikki continued, largely ignoring him.

"What's he doing in a children's playground, hmm? Yeah, nobody really wants to answer that one." He was right - whatever this man was doing here, it couldn't be good. Nikki glanced at Jack. Something had caught his attention and he started sniffing. "Can you smell bleach?"

Nikki nodded in agreement, before continuing her primary observation. "Yeah, I guess it could be. Strands of hair in the victim's right hand."

Jack handed her a bottle to put the hairs in. "Here. Struggle?" His phone rang before she could answer and he moved away slightly to answer it. "Clarissa, hi. I'm at a scene, love. Now?!" Nikki glanced up, surprised at his indignant tone. "All right, text me the address. All right, cheers." He came back over and packed up his case, before commenting to Nikki, "Gotta go."

 _"What?"_

"Clarissa says it's urgent." He explained. "Tell your man, I'll be back." He added, indicating the Detective approaching them.

Nikki wasn't up for doing Jack's dirty work for him. " _You_ tell him."

Jack shook his head at her with an air of irritation. "I don't want to get into a long conversation."

Nikki sighed impatiently. "Jack, _you_ don't have _long_ conversations."

Jack shook his head again. "Mm-hm" Oh, ha-de-ha, he thought, she knows me so well! He began walking off, only to come face to face with the Detective - who looked about 12.

"Detective Inspector Rory Drennan." The man said brightly, holding his hand out to make Jack's acquaintance.

"Nice to see you!" Jack exclaimed loudly, sauntering straight past the astonished Detective's out-stretched hand. Nikki smirked. She had been watching with interest to see what Jack would do after she had refused to help him out. He had dealt with the situation in a very 'Jack' way - as she had pointed out, Jack Hodgson didn't do _long_ conversations.

"Nikki Alexander" She told the baby-faced Drennan, when he appeared next to her.

"Carry on, Don't...let me interrupt." He answered with obvious nervousness, before contradicting himself by adding; "Killed here or was the body dumped?"

"Er, almost certainly killed here. No blood trail. Discolouration matches the body position - it hasn't been moved." Nikki switched on her tape recorder to continue her observation. "Livor has set in..."

"Any sense of time of death?" Drennan interrupted.

"Not yet." She answered, slightly impatiently. "That's what I'm doing - I'm trying to establish it."

"Sorry - eager!" He explained apologetically.

Nikki tried again. "Rigor is fully pres3ent..." Only for the eager detective to interrupt again.

"Is the forensic bloke coming back?...sorry." He had caught Nikki's eye and apologised again. She couldn't help being slightly amused.

"Rigor is fully present." She finished. She began her next observation and upon seeing the implement she was about to use, Drennan appeared to come over all nervous again.

"That's not going under his tongue, is it? He asked with obvious discomfort.

"No"

Drennan shuffled from one foot to the other. "I might just...check something in the car."

 **Back at the Lyell...**

In the cutting room, Nikki began her post-mortem. "Bruising from a hand grip is visible on the left forearm...as well as scratch marks." This man - whoever he was, had obviously been in a struggle. Her thought process was interrupted by knocking.

Jack popped his head around the door, a look of tormented concern etched on his face. "There's a wee girl gone missing. Police have issued a child rescue alert. She had brown hair, Nikki. Long, brown hair - like you found in your victim's hand. The crime scenes are about half a mile apart. It's not going to be a coincidence, is it?"

"Do you have evidence?"

"Naturally" He continued, "I've taken hair from the brush in her room and a toothbrush."

Nikki nodded, taking charge. "Well, let's run them and see if they match. Compare the hairs for similarities to see if they're consistent with each other while we wait for DNA."

Jack nodded, "Yup" and disappeared back to the lab.

 **In the lab...**

"Grandparents' or an aunt or something, that's where she'll be." Clarissa commented, with the aim of reassurance. "That'd be my guess."

"And that's all it would be - a guess." Jack answered. Cases involving children always got to him.

Clarissa tried again. "Stranger danger is unbelievably rare. 11 kids out of 11 million. It's literally 1 in a million." She was good with statistics and statistics _usually_ reassured Jack, but today he wasn't biting.

"Reassuring stat, unless you're the '1'."

Clarissa tried one more time. "You don't take her clothes if you're intending to kill her, do you?"

"No, but you might if you were part of a paedophile ring. If you were selling her."

Clarissa sighed. " _Who's_ selling her?"

"I don't know. The parent's?" Jack muttered, closely examining the hairs under a microscope.

She shook her head at his back and turned back to what she was doing. "That is _very_ dark."

"And we live in a dark world." He answered vaguely.

"Yes." Clarissa chuckled, "Well, I'm just trying to stay positive." Her humour was met with silence. "Jack? I said 'I'm just trying to stay positive' and you say: 'That's unlike you, Clarissa' and then I say..." She trailed off when she turned around to find Jack's empty lab stool staring at her. " _Jack_?"

 **In the cutting room...**

Nikki was in full swing during the post-mortem. She had just found a hair in a wound under the victim's chin and had carefully placed it in a bottle, when she turned to find Drennan and Jack watching her through the meeting room viewing window. They both clearly had something to tell her.

The three of them gathered i9n the meeting room. "The hairs share significant similarities. We won't know if it's a definite match till the DNA results come back." Jack began.

"I found another strand of hair in a wound under the chin" Nikki added, "I can't be sure if the wound occurred post-mortem or ante-mortem, but the hair was captured in congulated blood, so we might suspect it was ante-mortem."

"Result of a struggle?" Drennan asked.

Nikki nodded. "Bruising from the grip of a hand and scratch marks on the forearm are consistent with this. Preliminary investigation indicates that the victim died of a penetrating stab injury to the aorta by a sharp object that passed through the mid-thoratic area T4..." She gestured at Jack, who obediently turned around allowing her to demonstrate on him. Though compliant, he subconsciously reacted when she prodded her finger in his back and Nikki had to grasp his shoulder to steady him as she continued her explanation, using him as a dummy. "...entered here, through these ribs and cut the aorta."

Drennan scratched his head. "We never recovered the knife?"

"No" Jack answered, still with his back to them, unsure of whether Nikki had finished with him.

She squeezed his shoulder affectionately in response to his unasked question, before releasing him - allowing him to turn back and rejoin the conversation properly as she explained, "The weapon wasn't a knife. The tear of the skin and shape of the wound make me think that the murder weapon was cylindrical. 6 and 3/4 inches long with a hexagonal handle. You can see the hit mark of the handle consistent with a screwdriver."

Drennan nodded. "How quickly would he have died?"

"From the size and location of the wound, very quickly, minutes. He might have thought it was a punch at first, but he would have been in immediate distress. Most of the bleeding was internal."

"Right." Drennan made for the door, but Nikki wasn't finished yet.

There were wounds on his genitalia. The skin was broken...by teeth. I've swabbed the bite for saliva DNA. There are 5 noticeable tooth impressions. There should be a sixth. The two-two - the upper right maxillary lateral incisor is missing. The lateral incisor erupts at...between 8 and 9 years old. I think he was bitten by a child."

She caught Jack's eye. He looked as sick to the stomach as she felt. They hated their job sometimes.


	2. Chapter 2

**At Lizzie Craddock's home...**

The detective Jack had met earlier at Lizzie Craddock's house was still there quizzing the parent's when Drennan arrived with Nikki and Jack. The two cases were clearly linked and may change her whole investigation, so it was important to give her the heads-up, but Detective Conroy was in full flow and Drennan was not the most forceful man. He couldn't get a word in edgeways.

"We need to speak to you."

Conroy held up her index finger and Rory Drennan went quiet. "Give me a minute...We can't find your daughter and we can't find Mr Barge. Now I don't think that's a coincidence..." Nikki and Jack stood nervously waiting in the background as she continued, "Have you got a photo of him?"

"No, I don't think so." Cheryl Craddock muttered.

"No? Can I see your phone?"

"Yeah, yeah. Maybe on my phone."

Conroy continued. "What time did Lizzie get home from school?"

Cheryl Craddock was clearly nervous. "Um...3.30"

Drennan tried again. "Excuse me..."

Detective Conroy held up her hand to silence him and he once again retreated back into his shell, letting Conroy continue her attack on the mother. "What did she do then?"

"She went out to play with friends."

Nikki sighed under her breath. This was getting them nowhere and Drennan's assertive side clearly wasn't going to rear it's head any time soon.. They could be here a long time and there was a child missing. She stared around the room, her eyes falling onto a photo of the child. Lizzie Craddock had long, brown hair, as Jack had said, and there was a gap in her teeth. She glanced at Jack. He had seen the gap too.

Conroy, meanwhile, was still quizzing the parents, oblivious to the new development. "What friends, Cheryl? What are their names?"

"I don't know"

"How are you doing with that photo?"

Cheryl was looking feeble and lost. The child's father took the phone out of her hand. "Here, come on. I'll do it."

"Where was she playing?" Conroy continued her line of questioning.

Cheryl shook her head. "I don't know."

"What time did she get home?"

Cheryl Craddock was looking more uncomfortable by the second. "I don't know."

Conroy was relentless - this was a missing child after all. " _Why_ _don't_ _you_ _know_ , Cheryl?!"

The mother turned to the father at a complete loss of what to say. "Johnny?"

Johnny Craddock took charge again. "All right, look, I asked Cheryl to come meet me in the Duke of Cumberland to talk things through - you know, work things out."

"Yeah, work things out" Cheryl echoed.

"You were at the _pub_?" Conroy was clearly unimpressed. "Did you check on Lizzie when you got back from the pub?"

"I thought she was in bed." Cheryl muttered.

Conroy was disgusted and made no attempt to hide it. "You didn't check on her? You didn't make sure she was safe? You know, you gave me a description of the pyjamas she was wearing, but you didn't see her in them? You _don't know_ what she was wearing, because _you didn't see her."_

"Cheryl'd had a little bit too much to drink." Johnny interjected - as though it was a perfectly reasonable excuse for the situation.

It did nothing to weaken the detective's disgust - or anyone else's for that matter. "A bit too much to drink?" Conroy exclaimed incredulously.

The social worker chose this moment to appear. "Louise Marsh. Social Services."

Johnny Craddock reacted badly to her sudden appearance. He shot to his feet. "Get her out of here, right now!" There was obviously a lot of bad history there.

Detective Conroy ignored his outburst and looked at Cheryl. "You were _drunk_?"

"Yeah, she was drunk." Johnny agreed, still talking about it as though it was perfectly acceptable. "I walked her back from the pub and then I went home. You know, I thought Lizzie was sleeping."

"Have you got that photo?" Conroy turned to the latest arrival. "Were you aware of Cheryl's friend? Mr Dale Barge?"

Louise Marsh shook her head. "No."Johnny Craddock handed Conroy Cheryl's phone.

Nikki stepped forward and looked over the Detective's shoulder - if Drennan wasn't going to be assertive, then she would have to do it for him. She recognised the man in the photo instantly. He was lying in one of her fridges at thee Lyell. "That's Dale Barge? _Dale Barge is dead_." She stated to the silent room.

 **Dale Barge's flat...**

Dale Barge was dead and Lizzie Craddock was still missing. All their fears were fast becoming reality because there was certainly a sickening connection between the dead man and the missing child. Nikki, Jack and the two detectives stared with growing horror and disgust at Barge's collage of depravity. None of them wanted to say it out-loud. Jack finally broke the silence. "How do you feel if you're Cheryl and your boyfriend wants your 8 year old daughter more than he wants you?"

"Very angry" Conroy answered.

"Angry enough to kill him?" Drennan asked. He turned to Nikki. "Do you have _any_ doubt that Dale Barge was abusing Lizzie Craddock?"

Nikki shook her head with a mixture of total disgust and utter disbelief that such a thing could happen, etched on her face. "None."

"Barge abuses the girl. The parents kill him." Drennan stated simply, as though he'd already solved the case. This case was anything but simple.

"Where's the girl?" Conroy asked.

"She's already dead." Drennan answered, without hesitation and both Nikki and Jack had to fight off the urge to give him a swift one. Rory Drennan seemed a nice enough man on the whole, but he also seemed to want the quickest result possible, without even trying to find the child.

"Where's the body?" Conroy pointed out.

Jack dived into the conversation again. "If you're the parents, her body's your defence. It can prove Barge an abuser. Why hide it?" He suddenly thought of a reason and hated himself for suggesting it. "unless you killed her?"

Conroy was equally horrified by his suggestion. "But that would make the parents complicit in the abuse."

Nikki shook her head with fervour. "We have to hope she's alive."

"We solve the murder of Dale Barge: we find out what happened to Lizzie." Drennan summed up.

They left Barge's flat. As they walked down the street, Nikki saw Louise Marsh up on the bridge. She brushed Jack's forearm lightly with her hand, to get his attention and indicated the forlorn woman. "Blames herself?"

Jack nodded. "Looks like it."

 **Back at the Lyell...**

"That idiot doesn't even want to look for her." Jack fumed. "As far as he's concerned, she is already dead!"

"Shh-shh, it's ok., Jack, _we'll_ look for her. _We'll_ find her."

"It's not ok. It's not ok at all. She's a little girl, Nikki, she's just a little girl. and he doesn't even care."

Nikki pulled him into a hug. He was perched on his lab stool so he was more at her level than usual. It wasn't often that she saw this side of him, but these cases got to him and he was feeling a bit emotional as a result. "I think Drennan does care." She said quietly. "But he's young and new at this. This is probably one of the _worst_ kind of things he could have got for his first case as DI." She rubbed Jack's back comfortingly. "Ok now?" She leaned back slightly to look at him. Jack nodded.

 **In the meeting room...**

They all gathered in the meeting room, where Thomas and Clarissa joined them - the latter having gone through CCTV footage of the entrance to the common where Barge had been found.

"They arrive at 6.50pm. It places Lizzie Craddock on the common with Barge, but not _specifically_ in the playhouse." Jack began.

"No cameras cover the playground itself." Clarissa continued, taking over from Jack. "There's no CCTV of her leaving."

"Barge knew his way around the common, used to work for the council maintenance in the park's department." Drennan told them.

" _Used_ to?" Nikki repeated.

Drennan nodded. "He lost his job. Inappropriate material on his work computer."

"Does the CCTV put Cheryl and Johnny at the scene?" Conroy asked Clarissa.

"Nope"

"There must be _dozens_ of ways in and out of the common without using that gate." Thomas argued.

"The next person to arrive is a council employee. Never goes in, locks the gate. Leaves." Clarissa finished.

"Is there _anything_ forensically that places Cheryl and Johnny at the scene?" Conroy seemed sure that the parents' were involved.

But Jack shook his head. "Nothing so far."

"I've asked for their mobile phone records." Clarissa added pointedly.

"I'm on it." Drennan assured her. "Service provider's are sending them over."

Clarissa acknowledged him. "Yeah"

Nikki stood up. "DNA from the saliva on Barge's genitals is a match to Lizzie Craddock. She was in the playground." Jack stared down at the table. Poor Lizzie. Who knows what other stuff she had been subjected to by this man before she went missing. They _had_ to find her.

Conroy looked thoughtful. "So Barge abuses Lizzie. She bites him. He's incapacitated. She runs."

Nikki shrugged. "Who kills Barge?"

"Parents,? Vigilante?" Thomas suggested.

"Another abuser?" Conroy added.

Jack looked up from the table. "They fight over her?"

"Maybe he kills her because she's a witness?" Drennan suggested.

"She resisted." Nikki pointed out. "Perhaps he kills her because he's afraid that she's tell someone about the abuse."

"Her body's more than likely somewhere on the common. We target our search there." Drennan concluded.

Nikki glanced at Jack. This case was getting more and more sickening and he was finding it particularly difficult - she could tell. She knew he was not going to let on to anyone else how he felt but Nikki knew when something was upsetting him and she did worry about him. Since this case had begun, he was leaning on her more than usual.

Detective Drennan once again appeared to have made his mind up that Lizzie Craddock was dead. He was looking for a body, not a child and this infuriated Thomas, whose daughter was a similar age to that of the missing child. The case was hitting a bit too close to home for him. "You don't know that she's dead. _You ...don't...know!_ " He exclaimed loudly and firmly. _He_ wasn't going to let Drennan write her off either.

"The screwdriver didn't strike bone." Nikki explained - sensing the need to diffuse some of the tension between the men in the room. Drennan was doing a good job of putting their backs up. The usually placid Thomas was on edge and Jack had got to his feet and was _pacing_.

Thankfully it seemed to work and they were once more distracted by the technical details of the case rather than the emotional part.

"It would still have to overcome the recoil of the skin." Thomas pointed out.

She nodded and continued, using the interactive whiteboard to demonstrate. "Radio plaque contrast material. You can see the path of the weapon."

"Direction of the blow?" He asked her.

"Right to left."

"Right-handed?" Drennan concluded.

"Why a _screwdriver_?" Thomas asked the room, thoughtfully.

Conroy shrugged "Well, Johnny worked as a builder. He would have used a screwdriver."

"Yeah and I changed a tap once." Clarissa added pointedly. She was met with astonished silence.

Jack sat down next to her looking mildly impressed. "Did you?"

Clarissa sighed. "No. I'm making a point. _Everybody_ has access to a screwdriver."

"Weapon of experience" Drennan added with a nod.

"Traces of Sodium Hydrochloride on the body and some clothing had areas of chemical burns." Nikki disclosed.

"Destroying any _evidence_ they may have left behind." Jack added in a deflated tone. They were going around in circles and were nowhere nearer to finding Lizzie.

Nikki glanced at him, troubled by his obvious distress at their lack of progress. She wished she had something positive to add but it was Thomas who offered a way forward. "You're confident Lizzie was at the playground? And there was quite a lot of blood at the scene? Whoever stabbed Barge will have his blood all over them. When they leave the playground, they'll leave behind an organic trail of blood splatter which we can follow."

 _Maybe there was hope._


	3. Chapter 3

They had done as Thomas had suggested. Back at the lab, Jack and Clarissa were running the necessary tests.

"I found traces of blood leading to the rear gate of the playground, which leads onto the common. Then it disappears."Jack told them all. _Another_ dead end he thought.

"We're running DNA to confirm the blood belongs to Dale Barge." Clarissa added.

"The killer escaped the scene onto the common." Conroy deducted.

Jack nodded. "That's the assumption."

Nikki wandered in, examining her own lab results with a sharp eye. "Cheryl and Johnny Craddock said they'd been drinking _heavily_ the night before?"

Thomas nodded. "Yeah, it's why she didn't check on her daughter. Why?"

"Blood alcohol level decreases at a rate of 18 milligrams per hour after you stop drinking." She explained for the benefit of the less scientifically-minded in the room. "There should still be alcohol in their blood. There wasn't _None_."

"Why say you were irresponsible because you were drunk when you hadn't been drinking?" Thomas asked.

This supported Conroy's theory that the parent's were involved, Nikki thought. "You needed an alibi because you'd committed a crime." She answered Thomas.

"You're on the common and not in the pub." Drennan added with a nod."

 **Down at Johnny Craddock's allotment...**

The police had made a breakthrough. They had come across a family allotment as Conroy now explained - an allotment which the Craddocks' had so far failed to mention "It belonged to Johnny Craddock's grandfather. Died 2 years ago. No one reported it to the council."

Jack gestured over to Nikki and Conroy, with a look of dismay. He had found something - the remains of a school uniform. He examined it closely. " 'Holman'' I think"

Conroy Sighed. "Holman Hunt." Lizzie's school.

"And the top of a bleach bottle." Jack added. Things were _not_ looking good for Lizzie Craddock.

 **At the Lyell...**

"It doesn't mean she's dead, Jack. We're not going to stop looking for her, ok?"

Jack nodded and leaned into her for comfort. He was struggling and unusually, his tears for the missing child flowed freely. He was frustrated with the progress they were making - or lack of it and also the whole case seemed to be hitting him harder than anybody else. Nikki said nothing but hugged him tightly. She had seen him cry before on occasions - it was an emotional outburst he only indulged in on his own or in her company. He knew she wouldn't tell anyone.

"There's a vigil for Lizzie tonight, outside her house. Thomas and I are going - you could come too."

"I don't really believe..." Jack muttered.

"I know you don't" Nikki answered softly, "But it might help you and you would feel like you were doing something. It's better than sitting at home on your own, silently swearing at the dark." She added, knowing this was _exactly_ how he was intending to spend his evening. She lifted his chin to look at his face. "It might help." She repeated, quietly.

 **In Thomas's office...**

Clarissa explained the results of the evidence Jack had found in the allotment. "There are traces of blood on the fragment of the school crest, putting Lizzie at the murder scene or at least in proximity of the victim."

Jack continued. "We have physical evidence in an allotment linked to Johnny Craddock, which someone tried to destroy."

"Cheryl and Johnny lied about the night that Lizzie disappeared. They don't have an alibi." Nikki added.

"Do we arrest them _both_?" Conroy asked.

"They're clearly complicit."Drennan answered, again without hesitation.

Nikki disagreed. There were two possibilities here - either Drennan just had a very bad habit of speaking without thinking first or the man really believed what he was saying, in which case he clearly didn't know how to read other people. "If you watch them, the power is out of balance in the relationship. Cheryl is compliant, she's not complicit." Nikki told him pointedly. Jack could see that Rory Drennan was getting on her nerves and he couldn't help admiring her for not saying so out-loud. He could tell she wanted too.

Conroy agreed with Nikki about Cheryl Craddock's relationship with Johnny. "She needs him."

Thomas looked thoughtful. "How strong would she be if we took him away?"

 **Outside the Craddock's house...**

Jack had taken what Nikki had said to heart. When the vigil for Lizzie Craddock was held that night, he _and_ Clarissa were in attendance - the latter having been talked into it by Jack. He was there because of what Nikki had said. Clarissa, on the other hand, was there because Jack said it was their 'duty' to go as part of the Lyell. Thomas was surprised to see them there, it was one of the last places he expected them to be. "Clarissa, Jack. Didn't know you were coming."

Jack shrugged. "Light candles? Say prayers that won't be answered to a God that doesn't exist? _Wouldn't_ _miss_ _it_ _(!)"_

Thomas rolled his eyes. "I'll get you some candles."

Despite being initially keen to attend the vigil, now that she was here, Nikki couldn't help feeling a little awkward. They didn't _know_ Lizzie was dead - there was no _body_ and part of her felt a vigil was wrong. She was stood a little way behind Jack and Clarissa with her candle, when she noticed a familiar face. "Louise?"

The social worker seemed equally surprised to see her. "Nikki? You're here."

Nikki nodded. "Yeah, I don't really know why. I mean, I do, but..." she trailed off. she couldn't explain it.

Louise understood. "I know, exactly. We feel foolish. We're rational people.. This is... pointless. Why are we here?"

Clarissa suddenly realised that Jack was muttering something under his breath and was unable to mask her surprise. The younger man had _always_ maintained his disbelief. She glanced at him. His eyes were closed, which seemed to confirm that he was indeed praying for the little girl's safe return. It came out before she could stop it. "Are you _praying_?"

Jack stopped and looked at her. _Damn_. He had been exposed. He didn't usually believe but there was a child missing and he would do anything that might help find her - just in case it worked. He sighed and turned away from the eager woman. Clarissa wasn't giving up that easily. "Do you pray for _friends_?" she asked in a whisper. "Do you pray for _me_?"

"It does absolutely no good." He grumbled, annoyed that she had caught him out. He immediately contradicted himself by closing his eyes again and resuming his quiet muttering. Clarissa smirked. He couldn't fool her - a part of him believed in _something_.

As the vicar started to speak, Louise shook her head. "I can't do this. I've gotta go."

Nikki moved back over to her. "Louise?"

"We should be searching for her, not... _walking_ _around_ _with_ _candles_."

"Tonight's for us. Not just for her. We're reminding ourselves not to let the light go out." Nikki tried to reassure her, but Louise shook her head again.

"This shouldn't be _happening_. There shouldn't _be_ a vigil. I was _meant_ to protect her. I have to go." And with that, she disappeared into the crowd. Nikki felt sorry for her. It was clear that the social worker believed that Lizzie's disappearance was all her fault.

As the prayers continued, Nikki spotted Jack and Clarissa. She was glad he had listened to her and she moved closer to them Jack shifted slightly when she arrived next to him - despite having his eyes closed, he clearly _knew_ she was there. She heard him praying, but unlike Clarissa, tactfully said nothing. It was only because he cared. Nikki shivered, it was a cold night and whilst the hand holding the candle was warm, her other hand was cold. She quietly slipped it into Jack's empty hand - which as she had suspected, was still warm. He squeezed her hand lightly in appreciation of her not mentioning him praying.

As the vicar continued leading the crowd in prayer, Thomas appeared next to Clarissa and the four of them watched as Conroy and Drennan made their way to arrest Johnny Craddock for the murder of Dale Barge and the disappearance of his daughter.

As Nikki had predicted, Cheryl Craddock went into a flat spin. "Johnny? Johnny, what do I do?"

"Be quiet, Cheryl..Just calm down, yeah?"

"What are they gonna do to you?"

"Don't think about me. Think about Lizzie. Cheryl! Stay calm."

And Johnny Craddock was led away.


End file.
